Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: The indomitable Mrs. Tillou
Next story: The Grand Tour

Opera Sacra celebrates Puccini anniversary

Sing, Sister

Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini was born on December 22, 1858, and to celebrate the sesquicentenary of his birth, Opera Sacra will present a festival featuring his music at 8pm this Friday and Saturday, November 21 and 22, at St. Joseph University Church, 3269 Main Street, Buffalo. The program will feature a fully staged performance of Puccini’s one-act opera Suor Angelica, as well as excerpts from the Puccini operas La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, and La Fanciulla del West. Also on the program are excerpts from Broadway musicals including Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, and Rent, showing Puccini’s influence on the current musical theater scene.

Puccini enjoyed enormous critical and financial success when La Fanciulla de West, or The Girl of the Golden West, received its world premiere at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1910. Inspired by the earlier success of Mascagni’s one-act Cavalleria Rusticana and other one-act operas, Puccini next turned his attention to the composing of an evening’s program of three one-act operas. He first composed the hard-hitting, one-act Il Tabarro (The Cloak), based on a play by Didier Gold, in the melodramatic verismo style popularized by Mascagni. Looking for two other works to contrast with the very dark Il Tabarro, Puccini then collaborated with the young playwright Giovacchino Forzano, who suggested writing a sentimental tragedy and an opera buffa. Forzano based the tragedy, Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica), on an original idea, while the opera buffa, Gianni Schicchi, developed a minor episode in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The resulting work, Il trittico (The Triptych) premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in December 1918, and was a huge success. Gianni Schicchi was the most popular of the three works, and it soon took on a life of its own, helped immensely by the aria “O! mio babbino caro,” one of the most popular opera tunes ever composed.

Puccini deplored the breaking up of his work, made more painful for him since he himself preferred Suor Angelica best, having welcomed the opportunity to write a work entirely for female voices. While over the years, separate performances the three works have become the norm, sometimes coupling one or the other of them with the work of other composers, the Metropolitan Opera staged a highly praised new production of Il trittico that highlighted the Mets movie theater simulcast season last year.

Suor Angelica tells the story of a young woman of aristocratic birth who was sent to a convent to expiate the disgrace to her family of an illicit love that resulted in the birth of a baby boy. For seven long years, Sister Angelica has waited for a visit, or even for news of her family, but she has heard nothing. The initial scenes show the sisters going about their daily duties, with the sadness of the sweet-natured Sister Angelica delineated by Puccini’s delicately crafted, subtly ambiguous harmonies. Puccini had spent time at the convent in Italy where his sister was a nun before setting to work on the score.

One day a visitor is announced, Sister Angelica’s aged, formidable aunt, the Principessa. Her joy at the arrival of a relative soon turns to distress, when the Principessa reveals that the sole purpose of her visit is to have Angelica sign away her portion of the family inheritance to her younger sister who is soon to be married. Angelica’s hopes for some sign of affection from her aunt meet only with coldness, and the words “Atone! Atone!” Pleading for news of her son, the only hope that has kept her alive for seven years, Angelica learns that he died two years previously. Recovering after collapsing, Angelica signs the document and her aunt departs without speaking another word. Angelica then pours out her feelings for her dead son in the heartbreaking aria “Senza mamma.” After the convent is asleep, Angelica uses her medicinal knowledge of herbs to prepare a poisonous potion that she drinks. Suddenly realizing that she has damned herself to hell by her suicide, and that she will not she her child in heaven, she prays to the Madonna to save her. A heavenly choir intones the “Salve Maria” as the Mother of God appears, along with a young boy, who the Madonna directs toward his dying mother. Fulfilled, Angelica cries out as the boy walks toward her, and she gently falls back and dies.

Brother Augustine Towey will direct Suor Angelica and Roland Martin will conduct the musicians, while Colleen Marcello will sing the title role of Sister Angelica and Millie Staley will sing the role of the Principessa.

General admission is $10 and Student and Senior tickets are $8. For further information, call 833-0298.

blog comments powered by Disqus